Related papers: Sets of natural numbers with proscribed subsets

We consider the problem of minimizing the size of a family of sets G such that every subset of 1,...,n can be written as a disjoint union of at most k members of G, where k and n are given numbers. This problem originates in a real-world…

A set of sets is called a family. Two families $\mathcal{A}$ and $\mathcal{B}$ of sets are said to be cross-intersecting if each member of $\mathcal{A}$ intersects each member of $\mathcal{B}$. For any two integers $n$ and $k$ with $1 \leq…

Let $\eta_{g}(n) $ be the smallest cardinality that $A\subseteq {\mathbb Z}$ can have if $A$ is a $g$-difference basis for $[n]$ (i.e, if, for each $x\in [n]$, there are {\em at least} $g$ solutions to $a_{1}-a_{2}=x$ ). We prove that the…

A subset $A$ of the integers is a $B_k[g]$ set if the number of multisets from $A$ that sum to any fixed integer is at most $g$. Let $F_{k,g}(n)$ denote the maximum size of a $B_k[g]$ set in $\{1,\dots, n\}$. In this paper we improve the…

Every set of natural numbers determines a generating function convergent for $q \in (-1,1)$ whose behavior as $q \rightarrow 1^-$ determines a germ. These germs admit a natural partial ordering that can be used to compare sets of natural…

The well known binary and decimal representations of the integers, and other similar number systems, admit many generalisations. Here, we investigate whether still every integer could have a finite expansion on a given integer base b, when…

We prove a lemma that is useful to get upper bounds for the number of partitions without a given subsum. From this we can deduce an improved upper bound for the number of sets represented by the (unrestricted or into unequal parts)…

We call an $\alpha \in \mathbb{R}$ regainingly approximable if there exists a computable nondecreasing sequence $(a_n)_n$ of rational numbers converging to $\alpha$ with $\alpha - a_n < 2^{-n}$ for infinitely many $n \in \mathbb{N}$. We…

A finite set of integers $A$ is a sum-dominant (also called an More Sums Than Differences or MSTD) set if $|A+A| > |A-A|$. While almost all subsets of $\{0, \dots, n\}$ are not sum-dominant, interestingly a small positive percentage are. We…

For any constant $C_0>0$, we construct a set $A \subset {\mathbb N}$ such that one has $$ \sum_{n \in A: n \leq x} \frac{1}{n} = \exp\left(\left(\frac{C_0}{2}+o(1)\right) (\log\log x)^{1/2} \log\log\log x \right)$$ and $$ \sum_{n,m \in A:…

We study solutions to the equation $a+b=c$, where $a,b,c$ form a triple of coprime natural numbers. The $abc$ conjecture asserts that, for any $\epsilon>0$, such triples satisfy $\mathrm{rad}(abc) \ge c^{1-\epsilon}$ with finitely many…

How large can a family \cal A \subset \cal P [n] be if it does not contain A,B with |A\setminus B| = 1? Our aim in this paper is to show that any such family has size at most \frac{2+o(1)}{n} \binom {n}{\lfloor n/2\rfloor }. This is tight…

Let K be a set of infinite cardinals such that the cardinality of K is the first strong limit cardinal greater than uncountably many strong limit cardinals. We construct a family of pairwise non-embeddable groups which contains 2^k groups…

In a graph $G$, a set $D\subseteq V(G)$ is called 2-dominating set if each vertex not in $D$ has at least two neighbors in $D$. The 2-domination number $\gamma_2(G)$ is the minimum cardinality of such a set $D$. We give a method for the…

Given a linear equation $\mathcal{L}$, a set $A$ of integers is $\mathcal{L}$-free if $A$ does not contain any `non-trivial' solutions to $\mathcal{L}$. This notion incorporates many central topics in combinatorial number theory such as…

For integers $m$ and $n$, we study the problem of finding good lower bounds for the size of progression-free sets in $(\mathbb{Z}_{m}^{n},+)$. Let $r_{k}(\mathbb{Z}_{m}^{n})$ denote the maximal size of a subset of $\mathbb{Z}_{m}^{n}$…

We investigate additive properties of sets $A,$ where $A=\{a_1,a_2,\ldots ,a_k\}$ is a monotone increasing set of real numbers, and the differences of consecutive elements are all distinct. It is known that $|A+B|\geq c|A||B|^{1/2}$ for any…

We prove that any finite abelian group $G$ contains a collection of not too many subsets with a special structure, so that for every subset $A$ of $G$ with a small doubling, there is a member $F$ of the collection that is fully contained in…

For any fixed integer $R \geq 2$ we characterise the typical structure of undirected graphs with vertices $1, ..., n$ and maximum degree $R$, as $n$ tends to infinity. The information is used to prove that such graphs satisfy a labelled…

Erd\H{o}s asked what is the maximum number $\alpha(n)$ such that every set of $n$ points in the plane with no four on a line contains $\alpha(n)$ points in general position. We consider variants of this question for $d$-dimensional point…